Valerie
Lindner
The Tragic Life of the Girl with the
Extraordinary Mind
By
Henry H. Lindner, MD (under construction)
She was my best friend, best colleague, best patient, and
beloved daughter
She earned B.S. degrees with honors in physics,
astronomy/astrophysics, and mathematics; and completed all required courses for
her Physics PhD candidacy
I had the
incredible privilege of having this brilliant, unique, but tortured human being
in my life for 30 years. Through her I learned to see life and humans in a
deeper, more objective way.
I marveled
at her perseverance in the face of continual mental/emotional suffering and
physical deterioration. Despite her lack of hope, she kept fighting to get
better to the very end—for her family.
This website
contains frank, personal information about mental suffering and attachment
disorders.
As Valerie searched the internet to
find others who felt as she did, I hope that others will benefit from learning
about her life.
PowerPoint Presentation on Her Life
Valerie Lindner: My brief review of her life, illness, and education. I presented it at a memorial gathering hosted by Penn State’s Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos on April 19, 2024.
Academic Achievement
despite Chronic Babesiosis
We raised Valerie with
attachment parenting, unconditional love and freedom. She grew up pursuing her
interests, without schooling of any kind.
When
she was 10 years old, she was bitten by two deer ticks. She remembers gradually
becoming depressed and unable to draw as she used to.
By age 14 she was
fatigued, distraught and suicidal. We enrolled her in college courses for
distraction. She excelled in every class.
In 2016, with great
effort, she graduated as the top STEM student at Penn State University; her
professors loved her because she loved knowledge.
She garnered degrees
in physics, astronomy/astrophysics and mathematics, and took graduate courses
in all three majors.
Through her studies in
physics, she determined that my commonsense approach to philosophy and physics
worked.
However, she barely
made it through her senior year, and afterwards spent many months in bed.
After taking a year
off, she became well enough to start graduate school in physics at Penn State
in 2017 but became disabled again under the stress.
We eventually realized
that she must have gotten some previously unknown infection from the ticks.
Starting in 2018
antimicrobials, and especially antimalarials made her much more ill
(Herxheimer-like reaction).
Testing
eventually revealed that she had chronic Bartonella and Babesia
infections—both are parasites that inhabit blood vessels throughout the
body and brain.
We
eventually realized that the ticks had
given her Babesia odocoilei, the most common Babesia species
in deer ticks in the US, but hitherto ignored by the “experts”.
It
created fibrin-bonded nests that occluded small blood vessels throughout her
brain, sapping its energy and disturbing its function. In 2020, her brain PET
scan was grossly abnormal.
In late 2020 she
improved dramatically on a powerful combination of antimalarial medications,
but after that progress was slow.
She required very high
steroid doses to tolerate the killing and exposing of parasites in her brain,
and they altered her appearance for the worse.
She was able to return
to grad school in 2022-2023, but again the stress and emotions worsened her
state and caused her to need higher steroid doses for months.
On December 9, 2023,
at the age of 30, while working hard to rid her brain of sequestered parasites,
she caught a
cold and died of hemophagocytic syndrome.
Attachment Disorder
Her problems began
before the tick bites, her life was doubly cursed.
Since her birth,
Valerie seemed to be uncomfortable and needed constant distraction. For 3 years
she needed rhythmic bouncing in order to fall asleep.
As long as she could
remember, she never felt joy, happiness, or love. She never had the good
feelings that we all take for granted.
Val and I later
theorized that she acquired her Bartonella infection in the uterus at
around 10 weeks, at the time of chorionic villus sampling.
The intravascular
infection inflamed the emotional centers of her brain—the basal ganglia
and limbic system. Her 2020 and 2022 PET-MRI scans revealed hypermetabolism
there.
Since her birth, we
could not soothe her mental torment. She never felt our love and so
didn’t learn to love herself or humans in general. She developed an
attachment disorder.
She compensated by
seeking intellectual pleasure—whatever was intelligent, interesting,
novel, or beautiful—she became hyperintellectual.
She did not identify
as female or even human. She therefore viewed humans and their lives
objectively—as if she were an alien visitor to our planet.
The Babesia
infection worsened her Bartonella-related basal ganglia encephalitis,
thus causing more negative emotions.
In adolescence, she
was able to get some good feelings through a libidinous fantasy involving love
between androgynous characters—a human and an alien.
She was driven to
study the sciences to make her fantasy world as real as possible—because
she hated her life in this world.
At age 22, she found a
single human, an androgynous male rock star from the 70s, whom she could love.
Her life-long dysphoria disappeared and she could experience love—as long
as she could indulge in that fantasy.
She also had fantasies
of kidnapping, controlling, raping and eating young women and men. She studied
and understood serial killers. Part of her wanted to make others suffer as she
suffered.
There were two
Valeries: She could seem perfectly normal, even super-normal, when suppressing
her true feelings, but they surfaced periodically in fits of homicidal and
suicidal rage.
In July of 2022,
through her own research, she realized that she had an attachment disorder.
Psychotherapists could not help her.
She became convinced
that she could never find a permanent, real-life solution to her constant emotional turmoil, and
therefore needed to die.
(For a more detailed
summary of her life, see the PowerPoint below.)
- Research Ideas
for Flowing Space v. Relativity: Like the other writings on
physics here, she produced this in 2015, in the spring semester of her
junior year at Penn State University. She was preparing to apply to
graduate schools and was compelled to write down her ideas for her PhD
thesis. She was convinced that the Flowing Space theory of gravity was
correct, and that theoretical physics must be reformulated as a theory of
the role of physical inertial-gravitational/electromagnetic space in all
phenomena. This is the approach to physics that Einstein tried to suppress
by restricting physics to observer-based measurement-prediction modeling.
- Unanswered Questions in Physics, Relevant Quotes and other Ideas
- Thoughts on Electromagnetism
- Additional Thoughts on Quantum Mechanics
- The GPS System with Flowing Space Corrections: A paper she wrote at my request after a GPS expert claimed that the system would not work as it does if space were flowing radially into the Earth from all directions, as light signals from different satellites would have different spatial paths—particularly when comparing an overhead satellite with one on the horizon. She did the math and found that the “error” due to spatial sink flow was only 2.4 mm, well within the known error. She also proved that Flowing Space reproduced the Shapiro Time Delay.
- Online Debates on
Relativity vs. Flowing Space
- Dark Matter Distribution: A
PowerPoint presentation she prepared for an astrophysics course.
On Her Education
- Braddock Scholar: Unschooled but not Uneducated: A Penn State Eberle Science Journal article on Valerie’s unschooling and academic achievements.
- Interview with Valerie: Her responses were the basis for the above article.
On Her Suffering and
Disabilities
1. Her Anhedonia:
This was written in 2017, just after she started he first year at grad school.
This is a before we understood that she had infections and an attachment
disorder.
2. Babesia-related
Problems at School in her Undergrad Years: Two weeks after starting
classes each year she would become fatigued, brain-fogged, and cold, and suffer
from extreme hunger
3. On Her Attachment Disorder
and its Effects on her Life: Written in May of 2022, while she was
seeing a psychotherapist and before she fully realized that she had an
attachment disorder.
4. Collection
of Her Writings about Her Constant Mental Torment
5. Dreams: This
collection of some of her dreams provides more insight into her
mental/emotional predicament.
6. On the
Impossibility of Her Life: Written in January of 2023 after returning
to grad school for the Spring semester. I had to bring her home for a while
soon after.
7. Draft Letter to David
Sylvian: She often thought of completing and sending this letter to
David, the 70s rock star who changed her life, but she never did
8. Discussion
of Val’s Attachment Disorder with a Psychologist: From April
2024, several months after her death. I sent him some of her writings,
including her notes for her psychotherapist from the spring of 2023. I
described her to him. He agreed that she was a straightforward case and was
surprised that she had survived to the age of 30. He helped me to better
understand her and our predicament.
9. Henry on
Val’s Attachment Disorder: A letter that I wrote to a concerned
friend in Aug. 2022
10. Henry on
Val’s Hopelessness: Written to a friend 10 days after her death
On Music
She listened to music much of
the time, including when doing homework. It gave her a connection to other
humans and elicited thoughts and feelings she could not otherwise have.
1. On the band Tool: She explains why she loved their music so much. She was born at the right time, for the 1990s provided her with many bands that expressed anger, despair, and anxiety, thereby mirroring her emotions. She never liked sweet, melodic music. From a young age she listened to Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, and Slipnot. She loved Einstürzende Neubauten for the complexity and novelty of their music. Because of them, she taught herself German. She could recognize songs in a second, and perfectly sing complex musical lines.
On the Female Problem
1. The
Basic Problem with Feminism: As part of Val’s attachment
disorder, she never had normal human feelings, and especially female feelings.
Her mentality defaulted to a masculine type. She hated being female. In some
ways she was able to see her predicament, and that of all women, objectively.
She saw human sexual dimorphism as no different from that of other animals. We
have greater dimorphism than some species, less than others. For certain, human
males and females are very different. She saw that, in order for women to sexually
attract men, and to make, feed and raise babies, the Cosmos disadvantaged them
in other ways relative to men
2. Proposed
Book on the Female Problem and its Solution: She realized that feminism
was no solution to the female problem. She wanted those women who were not
content with their disadvantages to understand the true source of their
discontent and to stop fruitlessly and counterproductively blaming men. The solution
must begin with a full recognition of the problem and understanding of its
causes. As solutions, she envisioned hormonal manipulation in utero and/or
later in life (mostly higher testosterone levels), and eventually genetic
engineering to allow females to be as physically strong and as courageous,
inventive, task-oriented, and productive as men, yet still be able to produce
and feed babies. We humans have decided to interfere with Nature in many ways,
why not change ourselves? She collected and read many papers and books on this
subject.
4. Quotes on Feminism
and Male-Female Differences
5. Angry Thoughts
on Being a Woman: She wrote this a month before her death
Art
Drawing was her major
pastime. It engaged her with this world, gave her intellectual pleasure,
permitted her to make her fantasy world real, and expressed and relieved her
emotional turmoil.
1. Slide Show of Selected
Drawings:
After her Babesia infection, she lost the ability to draw effortlessly.
Her brain function and connectivity were degraded. She became very frustrated
with her drawings and despondent. Later, when the killing of nested parasites
inflamed her brain, she could draw only occasionally and poorly. It was a
severe loss for her.
2. Triggered:
The face expresses how she felt all the time. In the caption, she explains the
purpose of her art. This is an example of art that helped to relieve her pain.
3. Her Androgynous Fantasy Couple: They weren’t really lovers, as Valerie didn’t understand love as such. On the left is ND, an alien who came to Earth masquerading as a human. ND knows everything about the Cosmos intuitively, without language, and can form and shape matter by thought, including his/her own appearance. Hans (crouching on right) is a human who is a malformed female but identifies as male. Hans worked in a research facility with ND and figured out that ND must be an alien. Hans was sexually attracted to ND, but ND was unable to reciprocate. ND eventually gave Hans some her his/her special abilities—the kinds of abilities Valerie wanted to transform her own life. Both of her characters were self-inserts, expressing both her problems and aspirations. She had no insight into any of this until her “Husbando” revelation—when she fell in love with David Sylvian. Her fantasies about him allowed her to have normal human feelings for the first time in her life, and eventually allowed her to understand the nature and severity of her attachment disorder. When she was distraught, I could get her to cheer up a bit by asking her to talk about David or her alien fantasy characters.
Other Topics
1. On the Cosmos and Our
Purpose Here
Photos
1. With Her Family in Lebanon in 2008: A picture taken at her mother’s school, Sophie Hagopian, in Bourj Hammoud just outside Beirut. She was anorexic at this time. Babesiosis induced an insane hunger that forced her to eat, even when full. By this time, she found that she could control the hunger by eating extremely small amounts of food. Later, starving herself no longer helped. When stressed the hunger would worsen and she would have to “stuff her face” almost continuously to not only satisfy the hunger but to be able to function and to sleep.
2.
Valerie’s
Graduation in 2016: She needed high steroid doses to get through the
end of the last semester. After she came home we stopped the steroids and she
was left extremely fatigued.
3.
Receiving
Plasmapheresis in October 2020: She was not able to tolerate any
antibabesial treatment up to this time. Desperate to find something that could
help her, we followed a neurologist’s advice and gave her a 5-day,
high-dose corticosteroid treatment for presumed autoimmune encephalitis. When
the steroids wore off she was left in a much worse state—unable to walk
outside or even watch videos with us. She began needing to take very high
steroid doses to eat, sleep and get out of bed. The neurologist prescribed
plasmapheresis. While she was doubly immunosuppressed I started her on very
strong antibabesial medications. We quickly killed a large number of the
exposed parasites resulting in severe hemolysis, marked improvements, and a
large decline in her steroid requirement.
4. At the Camden Aquarium in March 2022: After 1.5 years of antibabesials and fibrinolytic enzymes she had improved enough that for the first time in 3 years she was able to make this trip with me to Philadelphia to visit the zoo and the Camden Aquarium. I cried with happiness as I watched her lean down to touch the stingrays.
5. With Dad at Luray Caverns and Choosing a Geode there in July 2022.
6. With Dad in Philadelphia in July 2023: She was gradually becoming more functional with the clearing of Babesia parasites from her brain’s blood vessels using lumbrokinase and nattokinase. She was able to walk all over Center City for 2 days and attend museums. However, the stress and emotion of grad school in 2022-2023 had worsened her hunger and caused her to need high steroid doses for months, causing her face to become more Cushingoid and her belly more protuberant. She hated the effects of the steroids on her face and body immensely, but could not take less than she required. She became enraged whenever she saw herself in a mirror because it meant that she could never attract the androgynous young man she needed to fix her attachment disorder, and therefore had no chance to have a life she could tolerate.
7. Val and I Taking a Walk in October of 2023: Just 1 month before her death. We took a walk together every day when she was able to do so, and talked continuously. She often complained to me about how there was no reasonable possibility of her ever having a life that she would want. She was proud of herself when she could avoid complaining to me, because she knew how much it hurt me. I argued against her conclusion because I could not bear to think of life without her, but in the end I believe she was right. I could not fix her attachment disorder, and no real person could. She was also so heavily infested with Babesia parasites (probably due to her pre-existing immunosuppressive Bartonella infection), and she needed such extremely high steroid doses to control her brain inflammation when she was dissolving Babesia nests and killing Babesia and Bartonella parasites, that she was essentially an untreatable case—one that only a desperate father-physician would have ever persisted to treat.
Let me know what you think.
hlindner1 at yahoo period com